A TRAVELLER encampment has sprung up 200 yards from the country home of Government minister Tessa Jowell.

Dozens of travellers piled onto the site over the bank holiday, setting up a water supply and laying electricity cables.

A septic tank has been installed and concrete pathways laid, near the town of Shipston-on-Stour in Warwickshire. Fencing has been put up and hedges have been pulled down.

Residents reported the caravans moved on to the twoand-a-half-acre site on Friday, leading to accusations that the caravan dwellers were taking advantage of the public holiday when nobody at Warwickshire County Council was working.

The field, which has space for at least 30 caravans, is just 200 yards from the country home of Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell and her estranged husband David Mills.

It was reported the travellers had bought the site from a local businessman.

Conservative councillor Chris Saint represents the area on Warwickshire County Council. He said: "Up until last Thursday it was simply a piece of pasture land. On Friday morning I got a call from one of the parish councillors to say that there was some frenzied activity taking place on the field.

"We view it with alarm because I have no information about a planning application even being lodged, let alone granted, and I would be the first to know.

"I understand that water and electricity have been brought on and I also understand they have put in a septic tank and put down roads and fencing."

Asked whether he thought the travellers had targeted the bank holiday weekend as no-one would be working at the council's offices, Mr Saint added: "We don't know that for certain but the speculation is that they have done this because there is a four-day window when officialdom is unlikely to get to them."

Zack Follows, aged 31, said that about 100 English Romany gipsies were currently on the site.

The father-of-four said there were 16 plots, which had each been bought for about £20,000. There were two caravans on each plot.

"The council is supposed to be supplying sites for the gipsy community but no sites are being provided and there is nowhere for the community to go. We have got piles of papers from how many times we have been refused sites," he said.

"There is water and electricity.

"I want my children to go to school. We are not the sort that pull up and down fields. Anyone is welcome to come down here and have a look.

Obviously it's a building site at the moment but when it is finished it will be done to perfection. There are some travellers who have put a black shadow on us, but there's good and bad in all.

"Ninety per cent of the people here are Pentecostal Christians and they go to the gipsy church on the other side of Stratford. One hundred per cent of the people here are tax-payers who have legitimate businesses."

The site was owned by businessman John Rutter but he sold it over 12 months ago.

His wife Michelle said: "We sold the land through an agent. We hadn't got a clue they had sold it to travellers."